Blame it on the Moon
by Tozette
Summary: Itachi likes cats and, in hindsight, that's probably his first mistake. Crack.


I haven't updated any of the things I meant to update. It's been a really long, like, three weeks, for me. I did write this, though.

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><p>Itachi woke up to pressure on his chest. Honestly that wasn't that strange, these days. He was sick and he knew he was getting sicker.<p>

But it wasn't... hard to breathe, precisely. Just heavy.

He opened his eyes.

Cat-green eyes stared back, glowing out of the darkness at him.

A lifetime of training kept him still for long enough to realise that they did, in fact, belong to a cat.

"How did you get in here?" he murmured, picking it up from his chest so he could sit up. Kisame was still asleep, or feigning it well.

He settled the cat on his bed, drawing his knees up beneath his blanket to prop his chin on them.

The cat looked calmly back at him. She wasn't very large for a grown cat, sleek and wiry and a little under-fed looking - a stray, perhaps, although that did nothing to explain why she had so little instinct for self preservation. Even rats avoided the Akatsuki headquarters.

There was a sweet little mark on her head, a strange crescent shape. It looked like one of those foreign blades they used up in Waterfall. Idly, Itachi reached out to let her sniff at him, and then rubbed the mark gently.

She blinked. "This was easier than I expected," she informed him.

Itachi paused. "A summon?" he murmured.

"Not... exactly," she hedged, ducking her head.

Itachi watched her passively for a moment. Possibilities raced through his mind: drugs, genjutsu, ninjutsu, hallucination - no. He discarded them methodically, one by one.

"You're a summon," he said, more firmly. The other options were that she was some kind of demon, or that Itachi had lost his mind so swiftly and suddenly that he never even got to notice his hands slip off the handle.

She sighed. "You know I'm not," she pointed out. "Wouldn't you know if the cats had contracted to anybody?"

This was true.

"Demon," he amended. His faith in his own mental stability notwithstanding, Itachi had seen plenty of people having post-traumatic episodes, and they weren't as pleasant as this.

"If that's what makes you happy," the cat shrugged. "I'm not here to argue with you."

Itachi waited. The question was obvious, he didn't need to ask it.

"I'm here to guide you," she said, tensing like she was preparing for immediate rejection. "I'm here to unlock in you the sacred trust - the power of the moon."

Itachi blinked once, slowly.

"I see," he said, in a tone that probably conveyed precisely how much he did not see.

Maybe it was a dream.

The cat made a tiny, frustrated noise and took a moment to thoroughly lick one paw and commence cleaning behind her ears.

"Look, can we discuss the details later? It's just, right now there's a village under attack by youma, and you need to save them."

"Specifically me?"

The cat eyed him. "Yes, you. As a warrior of the moon -"

"As a -?"

"A warrior of the moon," she repeated snappishly, "yes. And as a warrior of the moon, it's your duty to save the innocent people of Hato."

Hato. Itachi knew that village. It was a civilian village, small and poorly secured - more like a hub of trade and gossip for local farmers than anything else. It would be a poor place for an ambush.

He contemplated. "Me, specifically? Why not any other ninja?"

"Have you been listening at all?" She demanded like he was very, very stupid.

Itachi did not take offence. He was not in the habit of being offended by the opinions of cats. He just watched her. And waited. He was a patient person; he could wait a while.

He'd never seen a cat grind its teeth before. "It's lunar magic problem. It needs a lunar magic solution. As a warrior of the m -"

He held a hand up for peace. If he never heard the phrase 'warrior of the moon' again it would be too soon. "I understand," he said.

It couldn't hurt anything, really. And if the village was under attack -

He eyed the cat.

"If you lead me into an ambush," he said quietly, "I will kill you."

The cat didn't blink.

"That's fair," she said. "Here." Then she spat out a hair ball.

Except... it wasn't a hair ball. It was a brooch. With a moon on it.

It was a little slobbery, but Itachi grabbed it anyway. His gear was packed. All he had to do was throw on a new shirt and his shoes, grab his bag and...

Go rescue some villagers in the name of the moon.

He didn't have time to contemplate how strange and cheesy that was. Hopefully he'd wake up and discover this was all some ridiculous fever dream.

"Put it on, it will provide you with your armour," the cat informed him cheerfully.

It -? Itachi looked at the brooch.

Well, it wasn't any stupider than the Akatsuki's mandatory nail polish policy. He snapped it onto the chain of his necklace as he vaulted out the window.

Kisame's chakra gave a waking lurch at the sudden movement, but Itachi was long gone.

The cat was not struggling at all to keep up with him, which was certainly evidence in favour of Itachi's demon theory.

"Touch the brooch," she demanded, sprinting alongside him through the trees. "And say-"

"I need no armour," he pointed out. He'd been doing pretty well without it for the last eighteen years, after all. Besides, armour was noisy and heavy, and Itachi's combat style was silent and agile.

"It's enchanted, just - just do it!"

Itachi didn't pause in his stride, but since he was going along with this absolute madness already, he touched the brooch.

"Now, repeat after me: 'for love and justice!'"

_Really? _Thought Itachi dubiously. He did it anyway. "For love and justice," he deadpanned flatly.

That was not what emerged from his mouth, though.

His voice came out loud, really loud. "FOR LOVE! AND JUSTICE! IN THE NAME OF THE MOON!"

He flinched.

The cat smiled.

Itachi's limbs froze up. He missed a tree branch and dropped like a stone and it didn't even matter because suddenly he was levitating.

He was levitating and the world was full of tingles and sparkles and colour, shining brightly from within him. Ropes of moonlight burst from him and coiled around his limbs, through his hair, over his eyes -

He landed on his feet.

"Steady," said the cat.

"I'd be steadier," he informed her, "if your enchanted armour did not include high heels."

It also included a tiny, tiny skirt that bordered on scandalous, but it wasn't that cold so Itachi determined not to care even though his legs felt very bare.

Unusually bare, actually.

...apparently the brooch had also waxed his legs for him.

Well.

...well.

Itachi surreptitiously rubbed his bare skin. It was really silky. And... soft.

It hadn't been like that before.

He rubbed his arm. It was similarly silken.

Oh-kay.

"We haven't got all day!" The cat prompted, leaping into the trees again.

"How is this armour?" Itachi asked. It wasn't facetious or sarcastic; he was genuinely curious.

She looked down at him. "You're the pretty sailor-suited soldier," she said impatiently, "in that, you're nearly indestructible. I don't suppose you've noticed you're not using your sharingan to see anymore?"

He blinked.

She was right. His eyes were clear. His vision was good. He blinked again.

He touched the skirt gently.

Maybe it was dumb-looking, but if it prevented the chakra drain from constantly using the sharingan he could learn to coexist with it.

After a thoughtful second, he kicked off his high heeled boots and took to the trees again barefoot.

"You're going to cut your feet," the cat predicted sourly.

"I'm going to keep my balance," Itachi responded, although he didn't really disagree.

Hato was, in fact, being plagued by what Itachi could only really identify as 'monsters'.

"Youma," hissed the cat.

Itachi sized them up. They were big, grey-brown, swift and clawed. They didn't seem especially smart, but they didn't have to be to terrorise a bunch of civilians.

Itachi moved out.

Youma were significantly less exciting to kill than S-Class ninja. This was probably like a chuunin-rank mission at best.

"Stop - stop STABBING," the cat cried, after he'd come in like a wrecking ball and done with half of them.

Itachi paused, casually blocking a blow with his glove as he turned toward the cat. Whatever his new, scandalously brief outfit was made of, it was definitely armour-appropriate.

"Here!" The cat did a funny midair flip and threw him a pale, glittering wand.

He examined it for a second.

Then he whirled, ducked under a wild, clawed haymaker, and coshed the youma over its ugly head.

The cat made a distressed squawking noise, but Itachi wasn't listening. The wand was surprisingly effective, and Itachi didn't have to use his sharingan and the armour -scandalous as it was - worked really well.

Perhaps there was something to this lunar magic enchanting stuff after all.

"YOU CANNOT STAB PEOPLE WITH THE WAND," the cat shrieked once order had been restored.

Itachi examined it. It hadn't broken, and the grip was such that despite all the blood it had never become slippery.

"It's a surprisingly effective stabbing weapon," he disagreed, wiping blood from the pointy crescent-shaped protrusion.

"SACRED. TRUST," screamed the cat.

"It's fine," Itachi pointed out, presenting the wand back to her. It was roughly as indestructible as the armour.

"It - oh, my lunar goddess," she muttered. "Next time just aim and fire!"

The wand did not look like a crossbow, but the cat did seem to know what she was doing. "I'll try that first, next time," he told her serenely.

He peered up at the sun. The others would be up by now and they'd want to know where he was. "I need to head back."

The cat nodded sharply. She was a quick, stealthy thing - like all cats, really - and it didn't take her long to disappear without a trace.

Itachi thought for a moment, peering down at his bare feet and painted toenails.

He picked up the boots on the way back.

Once he got used to wearing them, they were astonishingly practical, really. And once he put the cloak on, you could hardly tell he was wearing a skirt.

Yes, Itachi could adapt to this.

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><p>Comments and queries welcome. If you do have a question about another fanfic of mine (the one I'm anticipating is 'WHY DIDN'T YOU UPDATE XYZ?' to be honest) then please note that this fanfic is not the place to post them. In those cases, PMs or reviews on the relevant fanfic, please.<p>

Thanks.


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